2 What Is My Self?
Barbara didn’t like thinking about herself. Barbara liked being self-centered as much as anyone else. Barbara liked talking about her interests and life, thinking about her interests and life, and pursuing her interests and life. Barbara just didn’t like examining herself, reflecting on herself, with any eye toward maybe changing herself or reforming herself. Barbara just wanted to be herself, until one day when she realized that maybe she wasn’t who she really wanted to be. And from that day forward, Barbara began her journey toward understanding herself and trying to guide, correct, and shape herself.
Definition
To mature and grow spiritually and psychologically, you might do well to understand what it means to have a genuine or authentic self. The definition of what we mean by one’s self is a curious thing because the self is a curious thing. When you look closely at many definitions, and perhaps any definition, you see how much deeper these constructs are that we bandy about as if they are mundane things. Nowhere is that more true than with the definition of the self. We all know what it means. I’m me, and you’re you, each of us unto ourselves. One’s self distinguishes one from others. But there’s more to it than just that. The self is also what we consider when we think about ourselves. The self is our focus of introspection, the entity on which or person on whom we reflect. The self is very close to the psyche, referring all at once to the soul, mind, or spirit. The self also refers to our essential aspect, some core about us that is more us than other things about us that we occasionally express. At one time or another, we may even explain our behavior away with the observation that I wasn’t myself. The self is instead who we believe ourselves to be when authentically expressed.
Consciousness
Your consciousness is the most apparent and transparent aspect, feature, or dimension of yourself. Consciousness, like the self, is so obvious and so lived out that we hardly give it a thought. Those who have studied it, though, find that consciousness, like the self, is more mysterious and hard to pin down than it at first lets on. For our purposes, your consciousness, referring to your thoughts generally and more-specifically to your thoughts about yourself, are what give you your sense of being, of existing in the present moment within a world in which you have influence if not control. You guide and direct yourself through your sense of self. You perceive yourself as a person with the ability to choose your goals and the means of pursuing them. In that sense, consciousness is a remarkable thing. Consciousness may be the single feature making us most human, in our ability to reflect on ourselves. Describe the physical features of a human, and you might consider us just another animal. Consider our consciousness, our ability to reflect on our place in a strange universe that seems conscious itself, and you might better consider us not just another animal but instead divine.
Transcendent
Our unique capacity to consciously contemplate our existence and deliberately reflect on the nature of ourselves and our place in the world gives us a kind of transcendence. You may take that sense of transcendence as far as you wish. If you prefer to avoid consideration of the transcendent, or especially of the divine realm, then stick to the simple fact that we can consciously think about ourselves. That ability gives us a degree of standing over and above ourselves, whether in approval, guidance, judgment, or simple reflection. The mere fact of our ability to transcend ourselves in order to examine ourselves forces our acknowledgment of some self standing over, above, or outside of the physiological, biological, material realm. The self isn’t material because material does not contemplate itself. The capacity to reflect over oneself demands a realm, dimension, or platform from which to reflect. Don’t trouble yourself unduly over the nature of that dimension, especially if doing so discourages you from believing that it exists. Let your own stance from which you evaluate your behavior, character, and nature be proof enough of that extended or external dimension, whatever other character that realm may have, such as who or what else might inhabit it.
Attributes
Given the hidden nature of ourselves somewhere deep inside us, or even transcendent outside and above us, we cannot know ourselves directly. Nor can we define the self by direct examination. We cannot place the self under a microscope or watch the self perform under a brain or heart scan. We must instead define the self by its observed and experienced attributes. What is in the spirit or soul, or even the mind, of a person? We tell only by observing what the spirit, soul, or mind expresses. We cannot say precisely how the self operates, nor even precisely what the self is or in what anatomical structure or physiological process it dwells. But we can sense the self in its operation, both within us and in the ways that we express what we think, desire, and feel. Consider the following attributes of the self and how they might be operating in you.
Individual
The self also refers to the individual, including to the unique selves whom we each are. We have great confidence that no two of us are alike. When we think of ourselves, we thus think of a unique individual apart from any other individual. We grow close, and even mentally and emotionally attached, to others. Spouses and siblings, especially twins, finish one another’s sentence, carrying on the same vein of thought. We thus sometimes meld our consciousness with another or with others. But we are still our own self, an individual person presumably capable of breaking off the brief union of mind, spirit, or soul. A soulmate is only that, a mate or good match, not another dimension of our own self. That’s the pleasure of finding a soulmate, to have someone so close as to reassure oneself that the world is hospitable, even consoling and comforting. Our self, not just the physiological structure of our human organism but particularly our self-examining and world-examining consciousness, is thus what makes us individuals, apart from others, with identity as a unique person in the world.
Collective
Yet as much as our self is individual and unique, the self that we acquire and develop is not wholly distinct. While each one of us is different, we are also all the same in some respects, within ourselves. Certainly, groups of us share language, culture, understanding, traditions, and customs. Indeed, our collective consciousness runs so deep as to constitute a significant part of ourselves, perhaps the majority of ourselves. Simply by sharing a language, we share large parts of not only our consciousness and understandings, including what it means to think and be human, but also large parts of our values and commitments, including what it means to be responsible, worthy, and respected. We also share something even deeper, on the border of the biological, in our common appetites, instincts, fears, faults, and desires. We hardly recognize it, but these deeper things get interpreted, influenced, and expressed through broadly influential yet mostly hidden archetypes, perhaps even powers, patterns, and principalities. Don’t imagine yourself unaffected by our collective consciousness, nor by our collective unconsciousness harboring these deeper and darker powers.
Generative
Your self has another key characteristic, beyond its consciousness, both individual and collective. Your self is also generative, living and active, dividing and stitching itself back together as it moves this way and that. You burble with both the expectation and desire that your thoughts would lead you to actions that would affect you, your place in the world, and the world around you. You not only expect to shape your world but also that the world would invite and respond to you. Your self is purposive, seeking, anticipating, and desiring, while expecting responses to your desires. Your conscious self isn’t a static observer, like a chronicler, recorder, or transcriptionist. You are instead consciously active, even procreative, constantly bringing new things into life. You imagine new things, then intend them, and then guide your actions to bring them about, while inviting the world to offer them to you. Your self is a generative creator, a doer, a maker and receiver of worlds, as large and far away as you are able to extend yourself.
Enduring
Your deepest inner self is also enduring. The scriptures assert that the transcendent one knits us each together in our mother’s womb, into a whole cloth straight out of his glorious imagination. You’ve known since your first moment of conscious thought that you are, in your authentic self, unique, unlike any other. You may well share characteristics of your mother and father, and of a sister and brother, cut as it were from the same cloth. But you are still your own person with your own yearnings and your own path through life, at the end of which awaits your own eternal destiny. Try as you might, and try as your parent, spouse, child, or counselor might, and you may shape or even completely change your outlook and behavior. This guide assumes your capability of new birth, growth, and maturation, all of which our transcendent creator promises. But that which is essentially you will remain, as it should, for your transcendent you is the creator’s own perfect imagination.
Ruler
You soon learn about yourself that you are also a ruler. If you are a student of history, you know the fabulous extent to which some rulers extended their empires, markedly shaping the behavior of their human subjects while also dictating economic and political alliances, and the material designs of palaces, cities, bridges, dams, and roads. Yet the human capacity to rule isn’t just for the famous emperor but also for you. We each rule as far as our reach extends, even if that rule is, at ages and in seasons, not much farther than the door of your bedroom or the door of your home. Our rule is also not necessarily as a despot. Some rule at times through service and even sacrifice, while others rule at times for themselves. In whatever way and to whatever extent we rule, we have that capacity and exercise it freely and often, expecting a degree of natural obedience to our rule. The greater your recognition of your capacity and desire to rule, the greater you may adventure in your effort to extend your rule.
Subject
Just as you sense yourself to be a created thing, living within a larger creation of extraordinary design fit for your rule, you also sense yourself to be a subject of rule. You are unquestionably subject to the natural laws and processes around you and inside you. You may remain influential at times and to degrees on the operation of those natural laws and processes, but not on the rules themselves, only their material outcomes, and only by rearranging the material over which they rule. The greater the degree to which you recognize and respect the rule to which you are subject, the greater your own authority extends to rule. You are thus both a subject and a ruler of other subjects, in effect, a subordinate ruler. And like any subordinate ruler, the one thing you must respect to continue and extend your rule is the authority of the one to whom you are subject and who grants to you your own rule. The self is thus both a co-ruler and subject subordinate ruler. Knowing your position as such makes you both powerful and humble, effective and respectful of the effect and rule of others. If instead you arrogate your rule to yourself, denying the one who makes you a ruler and subjects you to rule, you will have transgressed the rule of your authorizer and will likewise transgress the rule of others.
Rational
Another vital attribute of your character or self is your rationality. The self is deeper than its rationality. You are more than your conscious thought. You are intuiting things at a subconscious level that you then discern only vaguely and can articulate but barely. Yet your discernment and articulation are reasoning. They have a communicable shape to them, with meaning that others recognize and understand, and with which they, too, can reason. Our rationality is itself an extraordinary gift, this comprehending of the world in abstracted and symbolic representation that we can then manipulate and project to not only better comprehend the world but also to shape it. Our consciousness is only as powerful as our ability to give it structure and coherence, efficacy and use. Without reason, we might be conscious, but we would be useless in our consciousness, as ineffective as dumb brutes. The self’s rationality is its sanity and structure, the attribute that makes it worthy of beholding and gives it the exquisite taste of the divine. Respect yourself, value yourself, find fascination in yourself, and give yourself the greatest opportunity to grow to your fullest conscious capacity.
Reflection
How conscious are you of yourself? Can you think of others who seem significantly more self-conscious than yourself? What attitudes or behaviors mark self-consciousness? When you examine your own attitudes and actions, what or who is the you doing the examining? And what or who is the you that you are examining? Do you accept that you might have a deeper self from which you examine the persona that you reflect through your attitudes and behaviors? Do you have a sense that you are unique as an individual, not better or worse than others necessarily, but qualitatively different? Even though sensing your uniqueness, do you also have a sense that you share your consciousness with others, that your thoughts are often thoughts that you borrow or adopt without thinking, from culture, language, and the habits, practices, customs, traditions, attitudes, and actions of others? Do you sense a restless creative urge within you, to affect the world around you, in effect to rule? Are you likewise aware that you are subject to rule?
Key Points
We each possess an inner self that marks us as distinct from others.
Our consciousness of thoughts and actions gives a glimpse of the self.
The self stands above and transcends the persona it examines.
We understand the mysterious self best by its attributes.
Your self is individual and unique among other selves.
Your self draws deeply from a collective and shared consciousness.
Your self is generative, even a creator of things brought to being.
Your self is also enduring, from your conception to your ascent.
Your self rules a kingdom as far as its powers and authority extend.
Your self is also subject to rule, especially by the transcendent ideal.
Your self is also rational, logical, and reasoning in its desires.